Friday, January 16, 2009

Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger, III is a captain for a major U.S. airline with over 40 years of flying experience. A former U.S. Air Force (USAF) fighter pilot, he has served as an instructor and Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) safety chairman, accident investigator and national technical committee member.

He has participated in several USAF and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident investigations. His ALPA safety work led to the development of a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Advisory Circular.

Working with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientists, he coauthored a paper on error inducing contexts in aviation.

He was instrumental in the development and implementation of the Crew Resource Management (CRM) course used at his airline and has taught the course to hundreds of his colleagues.

Sully is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy (B.S.), Purdue University (M.S.) and the University of Northern Colorado (M.A.).

He was a speaker on two panels at the High Reliability Organizations (HRO) 2007 International Conference in Deauville, France May 29-31, 2007.

He has just been named a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

He also just ditched a commercial airliner in the Hudson fucking River, GLIDING to a soft landing after losing BOTH fucking engines to bird impacts, kept the plane intact, every single fucking passenger, all 155 of them, got out alive. When everyone was out and as the plane was sinking, he walked the cabin not once, but TWICE to make sure no one was still aboard before he finally left the plane.

I bet Obama will invite him to the inauguration and give him a public attaboy which he deserves. He didn't just save the passengers. He saved possibly hundreds or thousands more who would have been in the path of that jet if it crashed to the ground instead of in the river.

I always wondered about that when I flew out of NYC, especially from JFK where runway literally ends in water.I wonder how long before all these passengers stop talking about miracles and go see a lawyer. The pilot does have a giant pair of balls. That's why they make $160k, you don't want a discount pilot when you are crashing into a river.